Debate contribution: Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Frew
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 26 May 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5583489
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I rise to support Sian in securing the Adjournment debate on this very important and exceptional topic. The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. Everyone knows that quote from Gandhi. However, when we consider how we measure up as a society, I am not sure that we score very well. We score a lot better than some other nations and states across the globe, but in the so-called civilised Western world, I am not sure that we measure up. That is because so many parents and children are faced with a wall when it comes to accessing the services that they desperately need. They might get help here or they might get help there, but it is very rarely joined up, nor is it intensive, extensive or wide-ranging. Even when a child gets support in the medical field, in an educational setting or from the Department for Communities, everything else falls around them anyhow. Even the support that they get, intensive as it may be in that setting, does not help them in any way because they are so vulnerable in other ways. In that context, we need to get radical, especially when it comes to our young people. We cannot leave them behind, and we certainly cannot give up on them. Sometimes, however, it feels like that. When the system keeps saying no, parents can think nothing other than we are giving up on them. When the system keeps saying no, the young person considers that they have been given up on, and that will lead to all sorts of other manifestations and issues. I have fought hard on those matters. In my constituency, Ballykeel Primary School, Harryville Primary School and Camphill Primary School have been getting intensive support from psychiatrists and other specialists. It has been a couple of months now, and I cannot remember it all in my head, but that support was funded by the Department for Communities, which was really strange because those are educational settings. The schools were being offered psychiatric help and mental health awareness sessions, not only for the children but for their parents, yet the Department of Health had no part to play in that. The trust may not even have known that that support was going on, but everybody knew about it when it was under threat. We were able to get it put back in place. I got the Communities Minister down to visit a school where we discussed the matter with the three principals. To me, that is a great model of joined-up-ness, but it was just three schools coming together. It is quite common and is common sense. The three principals got their heads together and funded that, and they got support from the Communities Minister at the time. Why can we not roll out such an approach for everything involving young people, wrapping care around them instead of them waiting for years for a diagnosis, with parents struggling to come to terms with children and adults' behaviours and children struggling to come to terms with parents' behaviours? Some families are in deep crisis, and they have absolutely no way of getting out of it, because no one really knows how to help them. If we help them on the one hand, we let them down on the other. That is not joined-up government, and it is not what the Executive were meant to be about. It is not good governance in any state in the world. Mr Deputy Speaker and Sian, you will forgive me for raising the issue of lockdown. I do not care what anybody says: all or most of the issues that have impacted on the most vulnerable in society were made worse by lockdown. Those children and families suffered the most during lockdown and suffer the most hangovers from and after-effects of lockdown philosophy. I do not blame anybody in the Chamber and certainly not the Health Minister, but the Assembly has a blindness to that. The Assembly allowed it to happen, so the Assembly must come to grips with the role that it played —
— and come up with solutions to assist pupils, parents and children with how to fight and get well again.
714 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.05 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.91).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- Subject area: Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits.
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.04 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.04 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.04 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.91 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.05 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.86 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.12 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.01 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.01 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
Disagree with this assessment?
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